September 2

1666 - The Great Fire of London started
"Pish! A woman might piss it out."

[The Lord Mayor of London, roused from sleep in the early hours of 2 Sept 1666 to inspect the beginnings of the Great Fire; he then went back to bed.] Births

1726	John Howard, English philanthropist
1840	Giovanni Verga, Italian novelist and dramatist
1853	Wilhelm Ostwald, German chemist
1877	Frederick Soddy, English physical chemist
1938	Michael Hastings, English dramatist
1952	Jimmy Connors, US tennis player

Deaths

1652	José Ribera ('Lo Spagnoletto'), Spanish painter
1834	Thomas Telford, Scottish civil engineer
1910	Henri Rousseau, French painter
1937	Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics
1973	J R R Tolkein, English writer
1994	Roy Castle, British entertainer

Events

31BC	Emperor Augustus (Octavian) defeated Antony at the Battle of Actium.
1666	The Great Fire of London started; it destroyed 13,000 buildings in four days.
1752	The Julian calendar was used in Britain and the Colonies 'officially' for the last time; as in the rest of Europe, the following day became 14 September in the Gregorian calendar.
1898	Battle of Omdurman and re-occupied Khartoum, the capital.
1906	Roald Amundsen completed his sailing round Canada's Northwest Passage.
1923	The Irish Free State held its first elections.
1939	Under the National Service Bill, men aged 19 - 41 were conscripted in Britain.
1958	China's first television station opened in Beijing.
1985	Pol Pot resigned as Commander in Chief of the Khmer Rouge Army.
1962	The USSR agreed to send arms to Cuba.
1987	The CD-video, combining digital sound with high-definition video, was launched by Philips.
1997	A court in Denmark sentenced three neo-Nazis to jail terms for sending letter bombs to mixed-race couples and other targets in Britain.

This Month's Magazine

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From The Current Issue

History in the Classroom

David Cannadine

Collapse and the Limits of Consumption

Robin Whitlock

Fixing Broken Societies

Michael Roberts

From The Archive

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After Agincourt: Women and Pain	Britons in the Spanish Civil War: The King Street Crusaders
Robert Owen: Towards a New Moral World	The Way the Ladies Ride